Concurrent Programming on Windows (Microsoft .NET Development Series) (Paperback)

by Joe Duffy (Author) "Concurrency is everywhere..." (more)
Key Phrases: lock count, creating fences, thread start routine, Further Reading, Windows Vista, Windows Forms (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“I have been fascinated with concurrency ever since I added threading support to the Common Language Runtime a decade ago. That’s also where I met Joe, who is a world expert on this topic. These days, concurrency is a first-order concern for practically all developers. Thank goodness for Joe’s book. It is a tour de force and I shall rely on it for many years to come.”

–Chris Brumme, Distinguished Engineer, Microsoft

 

“I first met Joe when we were both working with the Microsoft CLR team. At that time, we had several discussions about threading and it was apparent that he was as passionate about this subject as I was. Later, Joe transitioned to Microsoft’s Parallel Computing Platform team where a lot of his good ideas about threading could come to fruition. Most threading and concurrency books that I have come across contain information that is incorrect and explains how to solve contrived problems that good architecture would never get you into in the first place. Joe’s book is one of the very few books that I respect on the matter, and this respect comes from knowing Joe’s knowledge, experience, and his ability to explain concepts.”

–Jeffrey Richter, Wintellect

 

“There are few areas in computing that are as important, or shrouded in mystery, as concurrency. It’s not simple, and Duffy doesn’t claim to make it so–but armed with the right information and excellent advice, creating correct and highly scalable systems is at least possible. Every self-respecting Windows developer should read this book.”

–Jonathan Skeet, Software Engineer, Clearswift

 

“What I love about this book is that it is both comprehensive in its coverage of concurrency on the Windows platform, as well as very practical in its presentation of techniques immediately applicable to real-world software development. Joe’s book is a ‘must have’ resource for anyone building native or managed code Windows applications that leverage concurrency!”

–Steve Teixeira, Product Unit Manager, Parallel Computing Platform, Microsoft Corporation

 

“This book is a fabulous compendium of both theoretical knowledge and practical guidance on writing effective concurrent applications. Joe Duffy is not only a preeminent expert in the art of developing parallel applications for Windows, he’s also a true student of the art of writing. For this book, he has combined those two skill sets to create what deserves and is destined to be a long-standing classic in developers’ hands everywhere.”

–Stephen Toub, Program Manager Lead, Parallel Computing Platform, Microsoft

 

“As chip designers run out of ways to make the individual chip faster, they have moved towards adding parallel compute capacity instead. Consumer PCs with multiple cores are now commonplace. We are at an inflection point where improved performance will no longer come from faster chips but rather from our ability as software developers to exploit concurrency. Understanding the concepts of concurrent programming and how to write concurrent code has therefore become a crucial part of writing successful software. With Concurrent Programming on Windows, Joe Duffy has done a great job explaining concurrent concepts from the fundamentals through advanced techniques. The detailed descriptions of algorithms and their interaction with the underlying hardware turn a complicated subject into something very approachable. This book is the perfect companion to have at your side while writing concurrent software for Windows.”

–Jason Zander, General Manager, Visual Studio, Microsoft

 

“When you begin using multi-threading throughout an application, the importance of clean architecture and design is critical. . . . This places an emphasis on understanding not only the platform’s capabilities but also emerging best practices. Joe does a great job interspersing best practices alongside theory throughout his book.”

– From the Foreword by Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation

 

Author Joe Duffy has risen to the challenge of explaining how to write software that takes full advantage of concurrency and hardware parallelism. In Concurrent Programming on Windows, he explains how to design, implement, and maintain large-scale concurrent programs, primarily using C# and C++ for Windows.

 

Duffy aims to give application, system, and library developers the tools and techniques needed to write efficient, safe code for multicore processors. This is important not only for the kinds of problems where concurrency is inherent and easily exploitable–such as server applications, compute-intensive image manipulation, financial analysis, simulations, and AI algorithms–but also for problems that can be speeded up using parallelism but require more effort–such as math libraries, sort routines, report generation, XML manipulation, and stream processing algorithms.

 

Concurrent Programming on Windows has four major sections: The first introduces concurrency at a high level, followed by a section that focuses on the fundamental platform features, inner workings, and API details. Next, there is a section that describes common patterns, best practices, algorithms, and data structures that emerge while writing concurrent software. The final section covers many of the common system-wide architectural and process concerns of concurrent programming.

 

This is the only book you’ll need in order to learn the best practices and common patterns for programming with concurrency on Windows and .NET.

 

About the Author

Joe Duffy is the development lead, architect, and founder of the Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework team at Microsoft. In addition to hacking code and managing a team of developers, he works on long-term vision and incubation efforts, such as language and type system support for concurrency safety. He previously worked on the Common Language Runtime team. Joe blogs regularly at www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1008 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (November 7, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 032143482X
• ISBN-13: 978-1580087674
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.1 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #93,323 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, January 26, 2009

By	Winston Kodogo - See all my reviews

I really wanted to like this book, but in the end I couldn't. It seems to me to be at least twice as long as it needs to be, extremely poorly and confusingly written, and a mish-mash of random odds and ends. I don't think the author has really worked out who his target audience is. Is it people who have a serious interest in the logic of concurrent programming - in which case you'd be better off reading the original papers by the likes of Dijkstra and Hoare, or the much much shorter book by Ben-Ari? Or is it aimed at people who want to write concurrent programs that work on Windows? In which case you'd be better off reading the much shorter book by Beveridge and Wiener.
Proof-reading and quality control is shoddy. For example, I have the distinct impression that at some point some-one has done a global replace of "task" with "thread" in the text, resulting in jibber-jabber such as "though it's highly unlikely that anybody reading this book will have to take on such a thread" on page 60, to cite one example out of several that I noticed.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books on the topic, March 4, 2009

By	Oren Ellenbogen (Israel) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'll split my review into 3 parts:

Know what you get (book's goals): 4/10. The book is a bit "all over the place". It's hard to understand the intent of the book -- it's a bit too theoretical for a "pragmatic concurrent development" that it claims to be which makes the entire book a bit fuzzy and way too long. The problem with this kind of books that you usually can't read all (reading 800+ pages is too much for most people) and you're afraid of missing important parts.

Coverage: 9/10. This book is a great "ref" book in my bookshelf, it explains high level architecture to very deep bits&bytes usage in a very readable fashion. I've got a list of pages that I recommended every one of our developers to read, starting from basic things and dive into data structures, interesting pitfalls and solutions and specific tips & tricks that I found very interesting during my reading.

Relevance: 10/10. This is a must have book for windows developers (especially for .Net developers). It contains crucial basics with an amazing list of examples and best practices (need to be pulled out carefully, but it's there).

I'm still missing a well organized "common concurrent pitfalls & solutions" chapter for the pragmatic developers (assuming that the background exists).

All in all, I highly recommend this book! nice work!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything about concurrency, and then some, April 2, 2009

By	DEH (Boston, Ma) - See all my reviews

This book provides an exhaustive treatment of everything concurrency in .NET and Win32.



It's organized very clearly into multiple sections: Concepts, Mechanisms, Techniques, Systems, and Appendices, and isn't missing a single thing. From background information about the roots of present day parallel algorithms and architecture, to how Windows and the CLR work internally, to higher level application models and best practices, it's all there...



As other reviewers said, this is the only book you'll need on the topic. The competition just doesn't have the broad coverage and incredible level of depth as this one. The book can be daunting at first, mostly because of its size (almost 1000 pages), but I found it surprisingly well written and enjoyable to read. Much better written than most techie books. It took me a few months to finish. I guess the author could have shortened it, but I don't know what content could have gone; the book just wouldn't be as great without every nugget of information that's in there right now. Some of the sections (like the ones on concurrent containers, detailed parallel algorithms like sorting, and memory models) took multiple reads for everything to sink in. I'm still not sure I've absorbed it all, but thankfully the book's organization makes it suitable as a reference too.



The target audience for the book as stated is any .NET or Windows programmer. Realistically, it's best for senior architects and developers, but could also be used to teach a university course or be read by less experienced developers too. I actually ordered copies for my whole team of 30 developers, all ranging in seniority, and it's basically required reading at this point. The author makes the point that concurrency is everywhere, and it's true. So the book isn't only for advanced new-age parallel programs on multi-core, but also server-side programming (web, app, SQL, map/reduce, data mining) and web apps. Really, everybody needs to know this stuff to be taken seriously. I've started using lots of these topics as interview questions.



What's best, the book is written by a Microsoft guy who runs the team building new concurrency APIs in .NET and Win32 today. (See his blog at http://www.bluebytesoftware.com/blog/ -- there's even a sample chapter there.) This gives the book far more authority than any other on the topic. I've downloaded CTPs of the .NET 4.0 parallel extensions (really amazing stuff), and the book demonstrates in detail how a lot of it is built. There's even an appendix covering the new APIs, so not only does it help build real parallel applications today, it also shows what's coming down the road.



In summary: A fun, enlightening read! I'm actually considering rereading the full 1000 pages again come this summer...